The Hill News

President Obama should call House Republicans' bluff and force them to put forward a plan on entitlement spending, former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said Monday.

Gregg, the recently-retired former chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, chided House Republicans for not having offered any serious plan to reform entitlement programs, despite their tough talk about the deficit and debt.

"I can't understand at all why you've got back channel people in the White House saying, 'Oh yeah, we really like it, but we're not going to talk about it right now,' instead of the president stepping up and saying, 'Okay, my commission came forward with some ideas, now you Republicans either join that commission proposal, or come up with your own ideas,'" Gregg said on Bloomberg Television. "And call the bluff of the Republican House members on the issue of the entitlements."

Gregg was a member of Obama's fiscal commission, headed by former Clinton chief of ! staff Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), which called for a series of spending cuts, and tax and entitlement reforms to address the long-term U.S. debt. While almost all the Senate Republicans on that panel backed the proposal, none of the House GOP members -- many of whom are now in charge of budgetary issues -- voted for the plan.

"There has to be leadership. And the Simpson-Bowles proposal is a template -- a memo, off of which that leadership could go forward," Gregg said. 

Gregg's remarks serve as a rebuke to Republicans in the House, who have talked tough about reforming entitlements, but have yet to put forward a proposal. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Sunday on "Meet the Press" that voters can expect" mandatory spending cuts that you'll see brought to the floor here in the coming weeks," but didn't detail what those would look like. The Ohio Republican had previously called for raising the retirement age, but recently said he was wrong to do so, saying that he didn't want to prejudge the Social Security debate.

The former New Hampshire senator chided both Obama and Republicans in Congress for focusing so heavily in their budgets on cuts in domestic discretionary spending. The Obama administration says their budget would cut $1.1 trillion over the next decade, but Republicans argue it doesn't go far enough.

"If you focus all your energy and use up all your political capital over the next six months debating these discretionary items, you're not going to get down the road at all in a significant way towards getting our deficit and debt under control," said Gregg, who also called on Obama to clarify his own position on the Simpson-Bowles proposals.